Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/581

 JOSEPH

509

JOSEPH

the welfare of the people. French "enlightenment" also influenced him, especiallj- in the persons of Vol- taire and his royal adept, Frederick the Great. Joseph viewed with jealous discontent the intellectual supe- riority of the Protestant North of Germany, then first

sistencies", and, in the glow of conviction, " desired by hot-house methods to bring his mother's incipient re- forms to maturity" (Krones). He united the adminis- tration of all the provinces in the central council at Vienna, of which he himself was the head, while he

dominant over the Catholic South: he also reflected abolished their diets or paralysed them by the provin- with chafing impatience on Frederick's victories and cial executive authorities. Though a professed en- talent for government, and thence conceived a defi- emy of every irregularity, he often undertook to decide

nite aim in life. But when he ascended the throne, his plans failed utterly.

II. As Ruler. — After 1765 Joseph acted as em- peror and co-regent with his mother, but administered only the business routine and the military affairs of the empire. Finally, resenting the manner in which his hands were tied by his prudent parent, he took to travel in Italy, France, and the Crown Lands. Twice he met Frederick the Great, and in 1780 Catherine II of Russia. In the same year his mother, Empress Maria The- resa, died, antl Joseph was free.

(a) In the Empire. — Joseph applied himself with the be.'^t intentions, among other mat- ters, to the reform of imperial jurisprudence. But difficul- ties from within and without checked his fiery enthusiasm. Although a Liberal and an im- perialist, whenever the inter- ests of the Hapsburgs were in question, he allowed the im- perial power to be lessened after the fashion of other Ger- man princes. Ecclesiastical polit ics also played a consider- able role in the empire. Joseph tried to secure German ec- clesiastical preferments for Austrian princes, urged ob- solete imperial privileges, e. g. the so-called Panisbriefe. to provide for the support of his lay adherents in imperial monasteries. By cutting off the Austrian territory of such great metropolitan sees as Salzburg and P a s s a u, he severed the last tie which

Joseph II Batoni, Belvedere, V

matters belonging to the central government at Vienna. German became the official language in all the countries subject to his rule; the courts of justice were independent and impartial to noble and peasant. Serfdom and the right of the landed nobles to punish their tenants ceased; the codification of the civil and criminal laws, begun in 1753, was furthered, and the death penalty was abolished. In his Ehe- patcnt Joseph created the Austrian marriage law; he subjected the nobility and clergy to state taxation, and opened up new sources of rev- enue; he abolished the cen- sorship and permitted free- dom of speech, a measure which loosed a flood of pam- phlets of the most pernicious kind, especially in ecclesias- tical polemics.

III. Ecclesiastical Pol- icy. — (a) Its Development. — Joseph was the father of Jo- sepWuism, which is nothing else than the highest devel- opment of the craving com- mon among secular princes after an episcopal and terri- torial church. Its beginnings can be traced in Austria to the thirteenth century, and it became clearly marked in the sixteenth, especially so far as the administration of church property was concerned. It was fostered in the second half of the eighteenth cen- tury by the spread of Febro- nian and Jansenist ideas, based on Galilean principles. These notions were by no

united Austria with the empire. Though not in itself means new to wide circles of German Catholics or conflicting with German interests, his scheme of ex- at the court of Vienna. Prince Kaunitz, the chan- changing the Austrian Netherlands for the neighbour- cellor of state, who directed Austrian politics for forty ing Bavaria on the occasion of the impending change years from 1753, was a personal friend of ^'oltaire, and of dynasty, led to the Bavarian War of Succession. In thus a zealous champion of Gallicanism. The Jansen- 1785 Prussia opposed the revival of this scheme by ist. Van Swieten (court-physician to Maria Theresa), forming the "League of Princes". Joseph now endeav- was president of the imperial commission on educa- oured to expand his dominions in the north and east, tion. At the university, " enlightenment" had power- and to make Austria dominant in Central Europe. He ful advocates in Martini, Sonnenfels, and Riegger, and obtained a considerable increase of territory in the it was there that Joseph's idea of a national state- First Partition of Poland (1773), and concluded a de- church received its legal basis. According to natural fen.sive alliance with Russia,which led to great schemes law, the chief object of a state ought to be the greatest for a larger gain of territory in the east. In the Aus- possible happiness of its subjects. The chief obstacles, tro-Russian war against the Turks (1788), however, neglect of duty and lack of mutual goodwill in individ- though Joseph's army took Belgrade, Catherine ob- uals, religion alone can remove by its appeals to con- tained all the fruits of the campaign. science. Hence the State recognizes religion as the (b) In Austria. — In home affairs, Joseph sought to principal factor in education: "The Church is a depart- weld the fundamentally differing peoples of the Aus- ment of police, which must serve the aims of the State trian State — Germans," Slavs, Hungarians, Belgians, until such time as the enlightenment of the people per- Italians — into one compact nation. So he began to mit of its relief by the secular police" (Sonnenfels). level and centralize great and small things in every The canonist Riegger derived the supremacy of the direction and in the greatest haste. Frederick II said State over the Church from the theory of an original of Joseph: " He takes the second step before the first." compact (pactuvi unionis), in virtue of which the Joseph's predecessor had not been heedless of the new Government exercises in the name of all individ- tendencies. She had set the machine of state running uals a certain ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Jura in a modern groove. In church affairs she had re- cirea sacra. Another canonist (Gmeiner) formulated sorted to strict measures to regulate disorders, but the following theory: Any canonical legislation that Joseph saw in these only "half measures and ineon- conflicts with the interests of the State is opposed